Gustav Adolf Steengracht of Moyland

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Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland in the dock in Nuremberg
August 1944: Moyland, second from the right in the front row, hears a speech by Fritz Sauckel .

Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland (born November 15, 1902 at Moyland Castle , Kleve district , † July 7, 1969 in Kranenburg (Lower Rhine) ) was a German National Socialist diplomat and State Secretary in the Foreign Office under Joachim von Ribbentrop .

Life

Steengracht studied law , agricultural science and economics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . With Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg he became active in the Corps Borussia Bonn in 1923 . After graduation his doctorate in 1929 for Dr. iur.

In 1925 he became a member of the Stahlhelm . According to his own statements, however, he had only been a member of this organization since 1928. In 1933 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 2,837,625) and the SA . In the same year he became NS district farmer leader of Kleve . From 1936 to 1938 he worked at the German Embassy in London for the Ribbentrop office. In October 1938 he took up his post as legation secretary in the Foreign Office . From 1940 to 1943 he was on the personal staff of the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , and from 1941 as Deputy Chief Adjutant. On March 31, 1943, he succeeded State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker . He stayed in office until the end of the war, making him the last State Secretary of the Foreign Office during the Nazi era . Steengracht last had the rank of SA brigade leader .

Steengracht came on 23 May 1945 in Flensburg in automatic arrest and was interned in Luxembourg. He later testified as a witness at the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , before he himself was indicted in the Wilhelmstrasse trial and sentenced as a war criminal in April 1949 to seven years in prison. He was u. a. Found guilty of dealing with the diplomatic inquiry made on behalf of the British government by the Swiss envoy Peter Anton Feldscher on May 12, 1943 at the Foreign Office as to whether there would be a willingness to allow 5,000 Jewish children from German territory to emigrate to Palestine Feldscher-Aktion was known to have deliberately abducted so long that it was impossible to rescue the children. His sentence was reduced to five years by revision on December 12, 1949, before he was released from the Landsberg war crimes prison on January 28, 1950 because of an amnesty . He then managed his property at Moyland Castle. From 1956 to 1961 he worked as a lawyer in Kleve.

family

Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland came to Moyland in November 1892 as the son of the Dutch nobleman Nicolaas Adriaan, who was born in The Hague in 1834 , Heer van Moyland en Till and his second wife Irene Theresa Lidvina Christine Paule Clara, Edle von Kremer-Auenrode World.

In order to be able to disinherit the eldest son Hendrik from his first marriage, the baron gave up his Dutch citizenship in the year the second son Gustav Adolf was born and became German. As a result, however, he was no longer allowed to hold the nobility title of a Dutch baron . This title passed to his son Hendrik, the half-brother of Gustav Adolf.

On May 16, 1933 Gustav Adolf Steengracht married Ilsemarie Baronesse von Hahn, who was born on December 14, 1908 in Griva / Latvia in Berlin . The marriage resulted in a son, Nikolaus Adrian, born on November 16, 1936 in Moyland. Steengracht's marriage fell apart after the war; the divorce took place on September 22, 1950. His ex-wife lived with their son until at least 1952 in Spain.

literature

  • Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3
  • Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
  • Chronicle of Moyland Castle . Stephan de Lange and Boss Druck und Medien, Kleve 2001 (further references in this chronicle)
  • Nederland's Adelsboek 1986
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition)
  • Joachim Lilla : Adolf Baron Steengracht von Moyland (1902-1969) - Last State Secretary of the Foreign Office in the "Third Reich" - A Biographical Approach , In: Der Niederrhein 71 (2004), pp. 129-136.
  • Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 9 , 978
  2. ↑ Dissertation: The constitutional moment in §§ 99, 100 of the draft of a General German Criminal Code of 1927. A constitutional and criminal law study on constitutional reform
  3. ↑ a b Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographisches Lexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main, 1998, pp. 441f.
  4. ^ A b Moyland, Gustav Adolf Steengracht von (1902-1969) , by Joachim Lilla, Future Needs Memory, February 25, 2007
  5. ^ I was a member of the "Stahlhelm" since 1928. Owing to the incorporation of the "Stahlhelm" into the SA, I became a member of the SA and joined the NSDAP in the same year. Final Brief Against the Defendant Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland , p.6, uga.edu
  6. ↑ a b c d Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, p. 331 f.
  7. ↑ Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Horst Wagner and Eberhard von Thadden as functionaries of the “Final Solution” . JHW Dietz. Bonn 2008. ISBN 978-3-8012-4178-0 , p. 230; the judgment is printed in: The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. The official wording of the decision in case number 11 of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal against von Weizsäcker and others, with divergent reasons for the judgment, rectification decisions, the basic legal provisions, a list of court officials and witnesses. Introductions by Robert MW Kempner and Carl Haensel . Alfons Bürger Verlag. Schwäbisch Gmünd 1950, pp. 101-104.
  8. ↑ The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal: The Mortimer-Percy Volume , by the Marquis of Ruvigny and Ranieval
  9. ^ "Chronik Schloß Moyland", editor: Stephan de Lange in collaboration with Johannes Hidding, Franz-Josef Lensing; Franz Weyers, printing: Boss Druck und Medien GmbH Kleve 2001, ISBN 3-933969-17-4
personal data
SURNAME Steengracht von Moyland, Gustav Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steengracht Baron von Moyland, Gustav Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer in the diplomatic service
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Moyland Castle , Kleve district
DATE OF DEATH 7th July 1969
Place of death Moyland Castle